MAKING POEMS are lithographs produced while I was living in Philadelphia
MAKING POEMS deals with the concerns of the poet, ( and sometimes the artist ) who
wonders why he tries to make Art. Who listens to his words, who reads them? Like the
baskets of straw he feels he is throwing to the waves, my image is one of extreme fragility;
a structure of poles and paper ribbons, built at low-tide, to be wrecked by the rising
waters. The poet sees himself as a
hermit by the shore making his poems like straw baskets.
He throws them into the sea where they are devoured by the
waves but he lives in hope that appreciation is coming
their way from some quarter. "That a sea shell ear
hear its bell tone note"In illustrating the work I choose to create a metaphor for that of the poet. I kept the image of a weaver, but was thinking of the art of artists like Christo whose wrappings of landscape or buildings have a certain length of existence, and like a theatre work, their destruction is part of the complete piece.
MASTER CLAY discusses a time in Fiacc's life, when he entered the Catholic Seminary,
lured by childhood memories of birdsong and bells, and found instead, intimations of death
and loneliness, rather than the spirituality he sought. In my image the monastery has
become a lonely tower where the poet waits for a gathering storm. The rope by which
he had climbed to the top is slowly burning closer and closer to the top, leaving him
without an escape if he does not soon leave.
TENTH CENTURY INVASION pictures the scene after raiding Vikings have plundered
an Irish Monastery. They have killed the monks, stolen their sacred manuscripts and
destroyed the beautiful handwritten books. To Fiacc, the poet, the worst loss of all is a
monk’s song in a drowned Bible's margin.
